Kathryn Creedy, John Williams and I discuss David Meerman Scott’s book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

Specifically, we talk about

The long tail of marketing

Thinking like a publisher

Not another junky blog (1-800-Got-Junk!)

Content: The Focus of Successful Websites

Your Company’s Salesperson in Chief

Close the Sale – Continue the Conversation

The New Rules of Press Releases

This was one of the most influential books I read when before we started ABCI, almost ten years ago – and it’s been continually updated since. Every time I pick this book up, I get another inspiration that leads to another five leads per month, or another plugged hole in our “marketing funnel,” or an improvement I suggest to a client.

Transcript – The New Rules of Marketing and PR

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Paula Williams: All right, well, welcome to today’s book club discussion about The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott.
This is one of my very favorite books. This is one of the first books I picked up when I was getting out of the corporate marketing world and into marketing for aviation, and it had a huge impact on me and on our company on ABCI. So I’m really looking forward to sharing it with everyone and talking about it.
So this is good stuff. So first impressions about the book, what did you think, Kathryn?

Kathryn Creedy: I thought it was very good. The title caught my interest because we’ve had new rules unfolding since the introduction of the World Wide Web, and it was interesting to me that somebody could just put it all together in a book, and I think we all need to be really, really cognizant of what is available to you to increase sales, because that’s the ultimate goal.
And this book does a really good job of that.

Paula Williams: Absolutely. John, what did you think?

John Williams: Well, having worked with you since the inception of the company.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] You’re a little biased also.

John Williams: Well, you told me that this has been your Bible since forever, and reading the book, with rare exceptions, you follow it right along.
So, there’s [LAUGH] I’m used to it.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] Okay. Seems like home?

John Williams: Uh-huh.

Paula Williams: Excellent, me too. I forgot to do introductions. You’ll have to forgive me, I got so excited we jumped right into the book. I’m Paula Williams, and Kathryn, you’re also with us?

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] Fantastic, that makes me happy, so I’m glad that works out. So what did you think of the concept of the book?
And this kinda threw me to start with. I thought this is not very professional. But, actually, it works really well. And the way that David Meerman Scott explains it in the introduction, basically what he has done is taken his blog posts for a year or more. It’s actually been growing.
When I first picked it up, this book was half its size. And now it’s in the neighborhood of 442 pages before the index, and we actually had to use special packaging to send this out to our book club because it wouldn’t fit in our usual book club envelopes.
But we needed to for this one. So what did you think Kathryn?

Kathryn Creedy: I actually thought it was very useful. I’m not a big one for flashiness, because sometimes it’s all flash and no content. But I found that this was really, it’s obviously self published, but I love the way you repurpose what he was already doing into a really good how-to manual to increase your sales.
So I was not put off by the non-flashiness of it because I’m not I think I’d go beyond that, as a matter of course.

Paula Williams: Absolutely. John, what did you think?

John Williams: Well, to me, since I’ve been working with you, it just seemed like a rehash.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH]

John Williams: Just sounded like you talking all over again.

Paula Williams: Right, okay.

Kathryn Creedy: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: But on one hand, this is somebody who publishes this stuff for free on the web. And then we go and spend, the retail price for this book is geez I don’t even know, it’s on here somewhere.
Go and spend money on books.

Kathryn Creedy: 24 bucks.

Paula Williams: 24 bucks.

Kathryn Creedy: Yeah.

Paula Williams: A big brick of paper to send to our book club and the first time I ran across this book, I thought, well, why on Earth am I gonna buy this book and then I’m gonna read his blog and I’m gonna see the comments and everything anyway and all of that stuff.
But when it comes down to it, I would much rather have a book in my hands, and it’s turned out to be much more useful because of the way he’s organized it, and because of the fact that some of these things are blog articles, he’s included some of the more useful comments and things that happened as a result of the blog into the books.

John Williams: I’m glad I’m recording.

Kathryn Creedy: I really liked that too. The reason, it really gives good insight especially, coming from both a PR and journalism, I love the fact that it seems to stay in that bit on the end of how to use your press releases to market direct to consumers.
He gave a little debate on what was wrong with that. And I thought, well, the guy who was debating him was definitely wrong, he’s right.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH]

Kathryn Creedy: So that insight was very valuable to me.

Paula Williams: Right.

John Williams: I’m glad I’m recording this, cuz she said she’d rather have a book in hand and she’s the social media here, online only kind of person.
So book?

Paula Williams: Yeah, I mean I like having things on my Kindle, but in this case I really like having the book in my hands because if you could see my copy, especially if you could see my old copy of episode one or the first edition of this, it is so dog eared and book marked.
Sticky notes hanging out of it. There’s so much in it that it turned out to be a really useful. [INAUDIBLE] One other thing that I didn’t mention is we’ve actually had, we repurposed content for ourselves and for our clients. For example, this particular episode is going to be a blog post and a podcast, and it may end up in a book of ours in the future.
And we use materials for our aviation marketing clients when we write articles, press releases and so on for them, being able to reuse those multiple times really makes it a lot more, gives them a lot better bang for their buck and makes it a whole lot more worth doing, just our podcast.

Kathryn Creedy: It also, for him it goes to the cardinal rule with marketing where you provide free content to Make the contact from which you will, that’s the funnel strategy. And then, you can market to them or you can sell to them or whatever.

Paula Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Creedy: But that’s exactly what he did by giving his best advice in his blog and then repurposing it into a book or a podcast or whatever is always very important.

Paula Williams: Exactly, exactly. So yeah and our aviation podcast has gotten almost 10,000 downloads and that kind of started as an afterthought of our blog. We’ve got [INAUDIBLE] who would rather listen than read, or watch videos than read. So if we do that in multiple formats, it’s really interesting to see how that ends up being consumed in different ways.

Paula Williams: Right, right. Yeah, that’s true. And the book reviews end up being some of our most popular podcast episodes. So that’s fun cuz we end up getting the author’s entire entourage wanting to hear what we said about the book.
So that’s kind of fun.

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm.

Paula Williams: All right. So let’s talk about the long tail of marketing. And this is from page 32 and what we mean by that is it kind of used to be you would run a Super Bowl ad or a one page big splashy ad campaign and it would be one big thing that happened.
And you would basically coast on that forever. [LAUGH] That would be your big splashy debut, but in the digital economy it has turned more into a platform or a digital or a drip model. And we talk about long tail, in terms of SEO, those are long keywords that very few people are looking for in international aviation marketing.
But the people that are looking for them, are very interested in your product or service. And that’s the same thing with marketing. You have very specific, very small advertising happening throughout the year and that’s a whole lot more cost effective and it’s also more likely to reach a more specific audience, which works great for aviation, right?

John Williams: Seems to me if you do it correctly, you get the inverse of that graph.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] You do. That is [INAUDIBLE]

John Williams: Seriously. You start with very small and it builds up.

Paula Williams: Mm-hm.

John Williams: Forever.

Paula Williams: True.

John Williams: Once you do it right.

Kathryn Creedy: Once again, it expands the audience because these people are highly receptive when they want the information and that’s the key to marketing.
Inviting people when they’re interested so the take rate is higher. And the sales, the sales term shortens quite a bit, in other words the time it usually takes to sell that person shortens because they already have a heightened interest.

Paula Williams: Exactly, because you’re catching them when they’re interested in buying and not when you’re interested in [LAUGH] in the Super Bowl or-

Kathryn Creedy: Filling it.

Paula Williams: Yeah, whatever it is that you’re building or advertising your ad.

Kathryn Creedy: But going back to your Super Bowl analogy, you may coach on it or you may not.

Paula Williams: True.

Kathryn Creedy: So put all your marketing eggs in one basket for a big splash when you could be far more strategic with it is a huge debate and I think it comes down on being far more strategic than just doing a big ad.
Saying well I’ve got a big Super Bowl ad coming up and getting paid from the Super Bowl ad. To me, that’s not the way to sell a product.

Paula Williams: Yeah, it may be the way to sell a retail product, but i don’t even know that anymore. [LAUGH] The economy has changed so much and aviation is so different from retail that I think model works a whole lot better in our market.

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm.

Paula Williams: Right.

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm.

Paula Williams: One example that comes to mind, and I’m trying to remember exactly what he said, but Daymond John, from Shark Tank, I’m not really a big hip hop fan. [LAUGH] I can’t imagine why. But I’m really impressed with Daymond John, just because he started from nothing and has really built a lot of successful businesses from very tiny niches, very specific groups of people.
And so when someone is in Shark Tank and they’re talking about market size, he says he just completely nods off when they talk about market size, because he doesn’t care. Unless you’re advertising for left handed pot bellied pigs with astigmatism, there is a big enough market for just about anything.
It’s just a matter of how engaged are you with that market, and how engaged is that market with you? Almost anything, if you’ve got 100 people who are raving fans, that’s enough to build a business and then expand from there right?

Kathryn Creedy: Yeah, yeah.

Paula Williams: Yeah so.

Kathryn Creedy: And it goes back to the long tail of marketing and putting it out just at the right time and being very, very strategic in what you put out and where you put it

Paula Williams: Right, so if you’re trying to engage everybody on the planet, that short tail works. But if you’re trying to engage a very specific group of people, it takes time to find them all and collect them into a little tribe and turn that into something that’s useful, right?

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

John Williams: Yeah, he’s got a good idea on one hand, but I think,

John Williams: He’s looking at a larger picture rather than a smaller market.

Paula Williams: Yeah.

John Williams: Well, smaller market. It depends on what you’re selling cuz not everybody’s gonna care about a new Tesla.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH]

John Williams: But the people do will be different from those that all they want is a car.

John Williams: And the difference in market size is extreme for those who wanna spend 100 grand for Tesla versus somebody that’s only got $14,000 to spend on a car.

Paula Williams: Right, exactly, and-

John Williams: If you’re selling customers you have to go for the big, you have got to figure out what your market size is. Where he says you didn’t care, well, I’m sure Elon Musk does.

Paula Williams: Yes, exactly.

Kathryn Creedy: It’s the same in aviation. I mean, what’s the market size for a 380 for instance?
Terribly miniscule compared to the 737.

Paula Williams: Exactly. And we had a client at one time who sold a very specific financial service for a very specific model of aircraft. And we figured out that she had a total international aviation marketing universe of 67 possible clients. But did well with that audience.
So not everybody’s gonna hear about that business, and not everybody should hear about that business because it only amounts to 67 humans on Earth.

Paula Williams: So that’s really the extreme, I think. And aviation is the extreme of the extreme in there, so. All right, so, let’s talk about thinking like a publisher.
I like this thought. And this is probably the key motivation for constructing ABCI the way we did, as opposed to the way every other marketing company I’ve seen is constructed.

John Williams: Constructed.

Paula Williams: Well, it’s a model.

John Williams: [LAUGH] Built.

Paula Williams: Built? [LAUGH] That model is almost like a magazine.
We look for topics that our customers are likely to be interested in. And that’s how we attract customers is by publishing material, right?

John Williams: Mm-hm.

Paula Williams: And it works really well for us, and it’s worked really well for a great number of our clients. Charter companies that talk about the destinations that are near them.
Legal companies that talk about the problems that their customers may be having at the time and space that they’re in the market for their services. FBOs that talk about their area and talk about what pilots want to hear about in that part of the world. The interior design for aviation is a whole different market [LAUGH] that we-

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

Paula Williams: Interior designers are a whole different set of people. They got a whole different vocabulary. And then, aviation interior.

Kathryn Creedy: They do, they do.

Paula Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Creedy: They have an entirely different mission and vision. I just did a story on Embraer’s executive jet interior strategy, and the concept it’s come up with, they haven’t got any customers yet.
But if that customer walks through the door, who wants a yacht-like experience in their aircraft, or who want to make it look like art deco, or want floor-to-ceiling windows in their aircraft, I mean, Embraer is ready.

Paula Williams: That’s fantastic. That’s really a neat way of looking at it.
You want a yacht-like experience in your aircraft.

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm, I was talking to their interior designer, or rather their chief designer, the vice president of customer design. And his vision is just incredible, and the story I did was where do you get your inspiration. And the inspiration was not from other aircraft, it was from high end products and analyzing why people buy those products.
And what makes them worth hundreds of dollars or millions of dollars. And how do you translate that experience of that product whether it’s a purse, or a shoe, a yacht, or whatever, into an airplane. So for the oil barons, they have a cowboys or western scene. For Hollywood moguls they’ve got something that looks like Hollywood from the 1930s.
And for the Japanese, they have floor-to-ceiling windows, cuz they know Japanese like to dine on the floor. So it’s really fascinating. But when you get out of that box of just trying to fill a human mailing tube, then you really can get creative. So it’s a different way of thinking.
And it’s a way that aviation has to adopt because I think we’re all distracted by so many things around us that, when we can take a concept that’s super successful and try to apply it somewhere in aviation. Then you become a disruptor or you start thinking out of the box, and you’ll get at least ink out of it.
I’ve seen so many stories on this. After I finished mine, I saw several more that came at the same time.

Paula Williams: That and you’re a trend-setter, Kathryn. [LAUGH] Everybody’s [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGH] and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Kathryn Creedy: Yeah!

Paula Williams: We talked about that last week. Marketing Monday.
My competitor does everything that I do. That’s hysterical. All right, so I really liked this example, the Not Another Junky Blog!, for 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Did you see that one?

Kathryn Creedy: Wait a minute, I think I skipped that one. What page is on that?

Paula Williams: Jeez, let me see.

Kathryn Creedy: Wait a minute.

Kathryn Creedy: 95?

Paula Williams: 95.

Kathryn Creedy: Yeah.

Paula Williams: So-

Kathryn Creedy: I love that whole concept because it’s so multitasking.

Paula Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Creedy: You write a blog and your franchisees get ideas on how they can market in their own home town. And it explains what the company is all about and how it works.
And, of course, my favorite part was they’re using the calendar.

Paula Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Creedy: So it’s new year’s resolution time. Let’s get organized and how to make more room for when the in-laws come to visit. I really like that because it can be used for so many purposes, but it also struck a chord so that when somebody wants to get organized, there it is on the Internet, how to do it.

Paula Williams: Absolutely, and it also changes the position of these folks from garbage men to people who are hopeful. And there are so many people that I talk to all the time that say, well, my business is boring. There’s nothing to write about in insurance or whatever the situation is.
But if you take this example and you say, well, how could you possibly write a blog about trash removal? And these guys do a fantastic job of coming up with really good ideas that are timely and interesting and fun and that people actually read.

Kathryn Creedy: Well, one of the things that makes it so important, but the way she does it is because she’s not selling anything.
What she’s doing is providing hints. Saying to the customer, gee, you could do this on your own. If you wanted to do this on your own, here’s ABC garage sale or eBay or however you want to do it. But if you don’t want to do it on your own, here’s some other idea.

Paula Williams: Right.

Kathryn Creedy: So it’s providing free information. It’s news you can use, but without the heavy sales pitch. It’s explaining an industry that most people don’t know anything about.

Paula Williams: Right.

Kathryn Creedy: And so, and it’s free, it’s like free information. Hey, I’m doing this as a favor to you.

Paula Williams: Right.

Kathryn Creedy: And hopefully, you’ll think of us when it’s time to get rid of all your junk.

Paula Williams: Well, and I kinda beg to differ with the point that she’s not selling anything. She is absolutely selling something very, very masterfully. And if you look at the results that they’ve gotten In terms of sales and everything else.
It doesn’t look like she is selling something, but she absolutely, positively is. You know that is the motivation behind this, and you know that is why she gets the resources she does to do this blog is because it is successful. And it’s absolutely helping their sales numbers.

Kathryn Creedy: You’re absolutely right, Paula.
But as a reader, there’s no hard sales pitch in there, and that’s what I was thinking of. As a reader, it’s gee, she’s just trying to help me. And maybe I’ll go to the website or whatever to see what other blogs are saying. So yeah, there’s She’s definitely trying to sell something, but as a reader, you don’t feel as if it’s a late-night infomercial.

John Williams: You may not gain traction financially, but when you talk to somebody else and try to convince them of your way of thinking, that’s selling.

Paula Williams: Absolutely, I mean I use-

Kathryn Creedy: But it’s also a warmer relationship. In other words, it’s gee, this is a pal of mine trying to help me out, even though I don’t know them. So it’s a warmer relationship than just saying call, it’s a television commercial that says call 1-800 got junk.
And so I think it’s a different, it puts the relationship, and of course everything is about relationships, so it puts this on a different plane than just retailing.

Paula Williams: Yes, that is absolutely true. I totally agree with that. I was just gonna say, I use sale techniques when I’m trying to get John to go have Indian food.
It’s not his favorite thing.

Kathryn Creedy: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: We’re always using sales techniques on each other, whether we like it or not, right?

John Williams: Nice.

Kathryn Creedy: But what I wanna know is do you guys know that you’re using sales techniques? Do you recognize it and go, nice try, but it’s not gonna work this time?

Paula Williams: [LAUGH]

John Williams: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: You know what? I actually kind of enjoy it, when somebody is really a good sales person. And is also personable and easy to get along with. It’s just like we almost jump into that and say that was really well done, can you tell me how you did that?

Kathryn Creedy: [LAUGH]

John Williams: We don’t want to buy what you’re selling, but tell us about your approach.

Paula Williams: Exactly I mean it touched nerves, it’s hard to relate to real humans but. Okay, so content being the focus of successful aviation websites. I think people get so hung up on design and color and sliders and moving things and cool technology and stuff like that.
But I really think that I agree with Scott that great content is really the differentiater, because I think a nice design nowadays is expected, and having a nice design is just the starting place for any kind of commerce.

Kathryn Creedy: That’s your introduction. It’s your first impression.

Paula Williams: Yeah, that’s why they find you, and your design might get them for seven seconds, but then if the content doesn’t keep them, then that’s a complete waste of everybody’s time.

John Williams: Content is easily discernible.

Paula Williams: Yeah.

John Williams: That gets you to the next long enough to okay, let’s see what it’s got to say.

Paula Williams: Yeah and then it has to be grabby and sticky and make sense and get you further down the road in the sales process than you were when you [CROSSTALK]

John Williams: Who was it in one of our mastermind meetings that we go to, somebody or another that you sell seven seconds at a time.

Paula Williams: Yep, you sell the first. And then you fill the next seven seconds and by the third seven seconds, you’re definitely into content, if not the-

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm.

Paula Williams: Yeah, absolutely. So if they’re not reading or listening or watching a video, the website becomes completely shallow and pointless, right?

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm.

John Williams: I know some of our potential clients, they should listen to this. [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] Not mention any names, but-

John Williams: Yeah, well, I mean, they think they’ve got it nailed on their website, but it looks,

John Williams: Not good, how about that for being?

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

John Williams: It doesn’t grab you and say, I wanna see what else is here. And without that, it’s just nothing.

Paula Williams: Right, and I know we probably disagree with some marketing folks here who put a lot more emphasis on design, but I really think the design is just a frame for your content.
It’s just a container for great content, and it has to be nice, but it really has to put the focus on the content. That’s what people are there for. That’s the meat and potatoes. And sizzle doesn’t sell aviation as much as it does other things. People are smart and they need vision.

Kathryn Creedy: Yeah.

John Williams: You go buy an airplane, you expect it to have power to take off [CROSSTALK]

Paula Williams: [LAUGH]

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm.

Paula Williams: Yup, and not just a shiny paint job, right?

John Williams: Yeah, with no engine.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH]

Kathryn Creedy: Yeah. You want to add an engine, that’s extra!

John Williams: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: You want an engine too? What’s the matter with you?

John Williams: You laugh, but back in say the 60s and 70s when manufacturers were selling trucks, you bought the frame and then you bought the engine, and then you bought the cab, and then you bought the wheels. Nothing came as a package.

Paula Williams: Wow, who knew?

Kathryn Creedy: That’s why I never bought a truck back then.

John Williams: I don’t mean pick-ups, I mean the big trucks.

Kathryn Creedy: I can’t think of anything more boring. I don’t like the way they sell cars now. Just give me the bottom line, don’t send me to 14 different people.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] Yeah, absolutely.

John Williams: You should go into a Tesla dealer and see how they don’t sell you.

Kathryn Creedy: I should, I should.

Paula Williams: It’s a really interesting experience. We need to try doing a podcast episode without John using the word Tesla once. We need to see if we can actually make that happen.

John Williams: The last one worked.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH]

Kathryn Creedy: So is that on his bucket list, getting a Tesla?

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] Yeah, he’s just a little bit obsessed. It’s kinda cool. It’s actually really cool. They have a really nice sales process and also a really nice product, too. All right, so let’s talk about your company salesperson and chief, in this case, Elon Musk, right?
[LAUGH]

Paula Williams: In aviation, we’ve got Brad Harris, Dallas Jet International, Renee Banglesdorf, Gene Clow of DC Aircraft. Great Circle Aircraft, and Chris Kilgour of C&L.
He is willing and able, [LAUGH] all of those folks, are willing and able to show up and represent their brand personally. And you look at any video that Pat did with Chris Kilgour. He’s really, really willing and able to be the face behind the brand and do whatever it takes to promote that brand and to promote their values and what they believe in.
It’s so obvious that he cares so much about his customers and about his people, and about making sales.

John Williams: Mm-hm.

Paula Williams: It’s a much harder thing, when someone comes to us and says they want to market a product or service, but they want to be behind the scenes.
That’s a lot to do. So I really-

John Williams: Things have changed in the last 20 years, and they need to keep up.

Paula Williams: Exactly. [LAUGH]. But these folks are not people that necessarily create every bit of content themselves, right?

John Williams: No.

Paula Williams: They have a lot of people helping them with writing and producing and polishing and all of those things, because obviously they’ve got a lot of things to do as a CEO.

John Williams: This goes back to-

Kathryn Creedy: And knowing what content would work when. I think that’s an important factor. For instance, I have my news feed every single day, and that tells me about trends, it tells me about what is being covered now, and that’s intelligence that I can exploit.

Paula Williams: Right, and every one of these people has an editorial calendar? Whether they call it that or not, they know what they’re going to be talking about, at what time of year.

John Williams: Who did we hear from, and I don’t remember what it was, but somebody said, it may have been you, that every company should be considered as a publishing company.

Paula Williams: Yeah, that was actually three slides ago.

John Williams: No, no, no, it was way after that.

Paula Williams: Yep, it was-

John Williams: No, it was way before today, it was way before this week, it was like a year ago, two years ago.

Paula Williams: That was the first time I read this book, probably ten years ago.
But you want to think like a publisher, and every company should be a publishing company. That’s absolutely true. Because anybody can produce a product, and if there are five companies producing that product, the one that is producing the best content to go with that product, and that could be training, that could be the stories of happy customer stories-

John Williams: When did it change? It didn’t used to be that way.

Paula Williams: I think it’s always been that way.

John Williams: No, it didn’t.

Paula Williams: Okay, Harley Davidson.

John Williams: No

Paula Williams: Fantastic stories.

John Williams: No, no, no. Before Harley became successful.

Paula Williams: Okay.

John Williams: Go back to the 60s when everybody that could say the word, car, could try to sell one.

Paula Williams: Coca-Cola, fantastic publishing company.

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm.

John Williams: Maybe, but look at the auto dealers, they weren’t.

Paula Williams: Ford.

John Williams: Yeah, they weren’t publishing anything. They weren’t trying to teach anybody anything. They were trying to sell cars.

Paula Williams: They created a whole city with an ideal utopian society, for their workers.

Kathryn Creedy: Yeah.

Paula Williams: And they were publish-

Kathryn Creedy: Well, not only that is they created an image that everybody wanted a part of.

Paula Williams: Yep.

John Williams: But they weren’t publishers.

Kathryn Creedy: So why do you want that Mustang? I want to be like the guys from the 77 Sunset Strip.

Paula Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Creedy: Talk about dating yourself.

Group: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: They invited reporters into the factories. They were one of the first people that did that.

John Williams: Sunset Strip was a Corvette.

Paula Williams: Heaven forbids.

Kathryn Creedy: Oop, sorry.

John Williams: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: Right. No, they invited reporters into the factory, they were one of the first companies that ever did that.
Wanted everybody to know this is an ideal way of making things work.

John Williams: Yeah, maybe but that was only newspapers.

Paula Williams: That was what there was at that time.

Kathryn Creedy: Yep.

John Williams: Interesting.

Paula Williams: Yeah, cool, all right, so let’s talk about-

Kathryn Creedy: Here’s an example that’s related to aviation.

Paula Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Creedy: Pan Am, all the aviation, all the airline companies used to just go to the major media market and invite those reporters.

Paula Williams: Yep.

Kathryn Creedy: And my father was director of North Atlantic PR at that time, and it was a particularly bad winter, so he decided that he would invite the Detroit Free Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune and all of these second tier markets.
Not the New Yorks, and Miamis and those guys. And he invited them to go look for Spring. So he got them into New York, and he got them on an airplane. And he took them to Bermuda, got them lunch or, was it Bahamas. I can’t remember what, they went to lunch.
And then they came back, the ink he got from that is Spring is coming.

Paula Williams: I can imagine.

Kathryn Creedy: And, yeah, so to me, that was brilliant. He wasn’t talking about Pan Am. He was saying, let’s look for Spring

Paula Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Creedy: But don’t you know all the articles had Pan Am all over it?

Paula Williams: Of course they did, absolutely, that was really smart.

Kathryn Creedy: Yeah.

Paula Williams: You have good genes. [LAUGH]

Kathryn Creedy: Yes, I know I do.

Group: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: That is cool. All right, so let’s talk about closing the sale and continuing the conversation. This is actually a really excellent point that I think he makes in the book.
And we did a little follow up. If someone makes a purchase, and then what happens? In a lot of cases, nothing happens, and that’s the worst thing.

Kathryn Creedy: Right.

Paula Williams: These are people who have invested money with your company, they are the most likely to invest again, or to support their decision by sending their friends and family and everybody else, because they’ve already been convinced.
And this is where the money in aviation is made, is what we call phase three sales, referrals, recaptures, resales, testimonials, all that stuff. And people say, well, we don’t get that many referrals or recaptures or resales or testimonials. And they’re just like, well, what are you doing to get them?
They don’t happen automatically, just because you made a sale and sold them a fantastic product, right?

John Williams: Nope.

Paula Williams: Yeah, right.

Kathryn Creedy: Well, this is where I think a lot of companies drop the ball, if they made the sale but there’s no care in feeding them to their customer.

Paula Williams: Right.

Kathryn Creedy: Retention is always a lot of cheaper than prospecting for sales. So they don’t do the care and feeding that they need to do to keep their customers happy, and to keep their customers referring their friends and relations back to them. So I think that sales are one thing, but continuing building a relationship again, all that relationship is probably the easiest thing to do, and often the most ignored.

Paula Williams: Exactly, we spend a lot of time with customers who are, it’s really easy to get them to spend money on aviation advertising, for new customers. And it’s really hard to pry their fingers off their wallet, to spend anything on their existing customers. And that to me is completely backwards of the way folks who should be investing in.
It’s like a sure bet.

Kathryn Creedy: Because it also says to the customer, well, I’m just taking you for granted.

Paula Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Creedy: I don’t need to do anything. I’ve got your money. I don’t need to do anything else. And that’s not a good way to care for your customer.

Paula Williams: Right, that is absolutely right. And yeah, so what are the strategies that we recommend. In fact, John, when you brought home the 172 Tell us about that process?

John Williams: Well you flew back with me

Paula Williams: I did [LAUGH] But I wasn’t in the whole, I wasn’t in every meeting, so.

John Williams: Well, we actually travel to the factory to pick it up, and before they’d even let me into the thing I had to sit thru three days of ground school on the glass cockpit. And then my checkout was a little longer than most because I’m commercially serrated, and I wanted to go ahead and fly all the approaches and become current again.
So we flew approaches all over Oklahoma. [COUGH] And then once I did that, then I went up with a guy for BFR checkout. He had this clipboard called the stuff, he had to check in it. And while he was going through that, he says do whatever you want.
I said, okay.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH]

John Williams: So.

Paula Williams: Play with it. Yeah, absolutely.

John Williams: So I said, I want to do some slow flight here, to see how slow it’ll fly. And he said, it’s okay. And I got it full flaps almost just barely above an idle. And the air speed indicator, I finally got it down to where it was, it’s vertical tape so it was bouncing between 25 and about 35.
And the book said don’t fly any slower than 49. So, and I did some steep turns about a point and he was over there scribbling around, doing all the stuff he was doing, and turns about a point and a couple of chandelles just for fun.

Paula Williams: Um-hm.

John Williams: Yeah.
But the thing, and that was in, what year was that?

Paula Williams: 2007?

John Williams: Yeah, eight.

Paula Williams: 2008, right.

John Williams: 2008. They redesigned the leading edge of the wing. And its slow flight characteristics improved substantially, and it was really a lot of fun.

Paula Williams: Yeah and then they sent you home with, well we picked it up at the factory and flew it home.

John Williams: Yeah.

Paula Williams: And you’ve got a card with a number that you can call anytime.

John Williams: Yeah, I got the chief flight instructor processor there at that factory and I got all these other people said, call me if there’s any question about it is that or the other thing or anything else I can think of.

Paula Williams: Right. Big pile of books and flashlights and keychains, and [LAUGH].

John Williams: Right, all kinds of stuff.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] Right. And they still call you every once in awhile, don’t they?

John Williams: Not since we got rid of them.

Paula Williams: That’s true. Good point.

Kathryn Creedy: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: But still, yeah, they had an excellent new customer package education, the whole nine yards.
They sent us home with baby pictures of the airplane going through the factory. All kinds of crazy stuff so.

Kathryn Creedy: I love that, I love that.

Paula Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Creedy: And that’s the way it is, that’s the way it should be. It’s an appreciation of the business, but it also says we care about you.

Paula Williams: Right.

Kathryn Creedy: As long as you own one of our products.

Paula Williams: Right. And I know Kaseytalks about, I think Honda Jet does a very similar probably even more elaborate new customer welcome process. And I think everybody in aviation should learn something from that and maybe not to that scale.
But you can learn something from the process. And whether you spend 20 bucks in it or 200,000 bucks on your new customer welcome process, it should be in line with the price of the product. But everybody needs to do something, right?

Kathryn Creedy: Embraer Executive Jets does something similar at each stage of the game.
Everything like cyber payments or whatever, they had to buy these really beautiful gifts that are handmade boxes, gorgeous wood and they’ll put in the interior, what the covering for the chairs or the side panel or little reminders of what has been ordered for their aircraft. And that’s all well and good, but if they don’t want those little reminders they can use that gorgeous box with the Embraer logo on it for any number of things because it is a work of art.

Paula Williams: That’s fantastic, that sounds like a really nice. I’ll have to look and see if we can find a picture of one of those on the Internet. I’m sure there is one somewhere that we can grab so people can see what we’re talking about. And then we had some really interesting comments about news releases.
I can’t believe I didn’t bookmark this for the group. But tell us what you-

Kathryn Creedy: Well it goes back to something that I think that normal public relations, everybody thinks of that as a press release that’s designed for the media.

Paula Williams: Right.

Kathryn Creedy: And the media will take it, and they will massage it, and they will print a story or they’ll just ignore it.

Paula Williams: Right.

Kathryn Creedy: My feeling is that with the Internet, we are able to get rid of the media filters for bad or for good, and market directly to our consumers, whoever they might be. So that not only is your press release designed for the media who may or may not write an article about it, you need to send it out to customers or whatever.
Just as one, a touchpoint, but two, maybe you’re sending it out on a Twitter or a Facebook or a LinkedIn or an Instagram, or whatever social media. It is just at the right time it goes back to the beginning of the book. Just at the right time that somebody is looking for your product.
So it’s the right time and the right place and they’re much more receptive. But one of the things in the book that I was very interested in and we were talking before we began was what Scott does, is he put it out as a blog and puts the blogs into a book.
But he also takes some reactions to his blog and includes that in, so you can see a little bit of the debate that goes on. And when he first published it, he got a guy from the Public Relations Society of America that says, direct consumer press releases suck.
He used it for his own blog. And that was the title of his blog. And then Scott goes on to say this is a world-wide web. We don’t need media filters to gain attention.

Paula Williams: Right.

Kathryn Creedy: And it’s a scatter shot method to send out a press release that may or not be picked up.
In the vast majority of cases it won’t be picked up.

Paula Williams: Right.

Kathryn Creedy: So you really have to have a broader audience than just the media. So and anybody who’s in public relations will know that, okay, the PR person has a very small world of contacts that he knows will print his stuff.
And so, it may be a dozen reporters. And it was funny, when Scott actually said, maybe a half dozen to a dozen reporters. And I said, that’s exactly right. Everybody thinks it’s gonna be picked up in Podunk, New Jersey, and it’s not. And so he has a long, it’s on page 339, he has a long Here on how to place your news releases beyond PR Newswire Business Wire or whatever.
And the other thing that I think everybody should know about is there’s a website that we all should be listed on, called Help a Reporter Out. And I troll that all the time, both as a reporter and as a public relations person. So a reporter, I’m doing a story on traveling with kids this summer.
What advice would you give me? And the smart PR person or marketing person will be trolling. And it’s delivered to your inbox, so you can see it twice or three times a day, what reporters are working on. And then you can immediately respond, and most of the reporters on there really like the fact that they’re getting responses from people who may not, that just says, I can give you lots of tips about buying an aircraft.
And here’s my biggest pet peeve. I used it for a story I was doing for in seat power and I got some great quotes that will help the manufacturers of in seat power units better their product and better sell it to their customer. So it’s called HARO, Help a Reporter Out, and I think anybody who’s a really smart PR marketing person should be trolling that and finding the reporters that are reporting on their segment of the industry.

Paula Williams: Right, and what’s interesting is we’re kind of living at the intersection of the new and the old right now. So a lot of the old things still work in aviation, getting to know reporters, using the HARO, Help a Reporter Out, using the wire services. We get really good pick ups from that, so I wouldn’t stop doing that.
But then-

Kathryn Creedy: No.

Paula Williams: So many additional things that you can do now that you couldn’t do even five years ago because-

Kathryn Creedy: Right.

Paula Williams: The client just wasn’t there so-

Kathryn Creedy: So absolutely, you wanna send it out to your reporters but-

Paula Williams: Yeah.

Kathryn Creedy: You also want to send it to all of your constituencies.

Paula Williams: Yes, that’s absolutely true. Excellent point, Kathryn. I’m glad you caught that because that’s something that’s definitely worth talking about. All right, so next month we have a much shorter book. [LAUGH] This one actually will fit into our usual packaging. We’re happy about that.

Kathryn Creedy: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: Also there’s gonna be a lot less reading.
This is half the size or maybe even a third the size of the book that we read this time. [LAUGH] I know, what was it, in middle school or high school, that I had some friends who would actually pick the books for their book reviews based on the thickness of the book.
And because it was less work for them.

Kathryn Creedy: Good, strategic.

Paula Williams: Exactly.

Kathryn Creedy: Strategic.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] Yeah, some people are gonna love this, some people are gonna hate it, just because Dan Kennedy’s style is pretty abrasive. But he definitely tells it like it is, as far as sales goes.
And I think the mechanics of what he talks about are excellent, whether or not the style is your thing or not. So I think it’s worth a read, and you can hold your nose if you need to, but definitely worth the read. Some people are gonna really enjoy it.
I know John really likes it.

John Williams: And regardless of style-

Paula Williams: Uh-huh.

John Williams: You can’t knock his success.

Paula Williams: That’s true, absolutely. So his mechanics are definitely sound. This one is going to be in the mail this week, so look for that and I’m really looking forward to talking about it.
That will be so much fun.

John Williams: [LAUGH]

Paula Williams: Good, all right, okay, well thank you for joining us. And Kathryn, can you give us a little preview of what’s up for you nowadays, and what you’re up to?

Kathryn Creedy: We’ll, I’m doing a lot of stories. One, I went to a Caribbean aviation conference, and I’ve gotta put all those in the hopper.
And I’m finishing up an article for Women in Aviation. And I’m going to a very interesting conference in London on single engine turbo prop operations. So that’s the segment of the market where the subscription airlines are, or airlines who are very small and outside the hub and spoke and the code sharing and all that kinda stuff.
It’s kind of exciting. I think, to me, that’s where I haven’t seen that much activity in the marketplace since the beginning of the regional airline industry post-deregulation. So I’m really excited about that.

Paula Williams: Fantastic, and tell people how they can get hold of you or how you prefer they get hold of you.

Paula Williams: Excellent, that’s Kathryn with a K and Creedy with a C.

Kathryn Creedy: That’s correct.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] All right. And John, what are you up to these days?

John Williams: Helping people build companies.

Paula Williams: [LAUGH] Yeah, we’ve got clients of various sorts with different problems other than marketing so.

John Williams: Exactly.

Paula Williams: All right.

John Williams: We’re business consultants as well.

Paula Williams: Exactly and-

Kathryn Creedy: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

Paula Williams: I think to help people with NBAA and the other trade shows that are coming up later in the year. Our current special, of course, if you’re listening to this during August of 2017, I know people sometimes listen to this after the fact.
But is basically we will do a brochure for you if you subscribe to our social media service or our digital marketing service, actually. It includes a lot more than social media. It’s also [COUGH] some things like being able to track your online visibility and other things like that in a much more efficient way using some of the cool expensive software that’s on the market these days, right?

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